Wildcards

Wildcards were weird this season. Keeping your wildcard till GW34 was a good idea if you were doing well without playing it in the first half of the season. In fact, DGW 34 was by far the most popular time for playing a wildcard for the top 10K samples: 18% played them that GW vs. only 10% in GW4, which was the second by popularity. This is very different to last season: only 4.5% wildcards were played in top 10K in the gameweek that was most popular for wildcarding in the second half of that season.

What has also made GW 34 a good time for playing a wildcard this season is the evidence that it was easier not to play it early in the season and still to do well than it was last season. Over 25% teams of the top 10K after the January window had their wildcards intact. Last season, this number was significantly lower: only 16%. In contrast, in FPL overall there were slightly fewer wildcards available at that point: 52% vs. 54% a year before.

In FPL in general, GW 4 was the most popular GW for wildcarding. Only 52% FPL teams used their wildcards at all (a number very similar to last season), half of those were gone after GW 4.

Wildcard timing is an interesting topic, I think I’ll prepare a separate article about it soon based on the data for 2-3 seasons.